The Sound of Silence

When I'm alone and the blackness of night envelops me, I think of her wild, fearful eyes, and the blurry smudge of mascara dripping down her cheeks, soaking into the cloth gag between her lips. I don't want to think of it; in fact, I've tried to suppress it for nearly twenty years, but it reminds me of who I am. It reminds me of where I came from. I've tried to forget about her hair matted with sweat, and stiff with dried blood. I've tried to forget the binds on her wrists and ankles, her torn nightgown exposing her dark brown ass and the curly dark hair between her legs. I've tried in vain to forget.

It's funny how selective memory can be. I don't remember how old I was when I began to shave, or the first time I masturbated, but I still recall that night as if it were yesterday. I remember the shaft of light from the hallway that fell across Mario's back as I pushed open the door, wiping the sleepy innocence from my eyes. I still feel his burning gaze penetrate my four-year-old frame as he turned to find me in the doorway, clutching a scruffy stuffed bear by one stringy paw. As his hard, black face filled with anger and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, my mother squirmed on the bed, chomping on her bit trying and failing to speak, scream, or cry. If I close my eyes, I can still hear her attempt to call my name, the syllables a jumble in the folds of her restraint.

"Get your ass outta here, you little black bastard!" Mario's fist swung wildly out of the darkness and connected with my head sending me, and the bear, sprawling backward into the hall. I was stunned, more by his words than his fist, which had connected with a drunken awkwardness and merely knocked me off balance.

The bear flopped at Mario's feet like a twisted rag. From the floor I studied my mother, intrigued and repelled by her naked lower half and humiliating posture. Her nightgown was a tattered mess, her arms were scraped and bruised and her left eye was beginning to swell. She looked weak and pathetic and I was suddenly ashamed and scared. A flood of tears bubbled behind my eyes and exploded like a hydrant. Mario punted the bear and it sailed into my lap like a paper football.

"Go on back to bed," he snarled behind the closing bedroom door. "Your mama an' I got some adult things to discuss."

As the door slammed shut, I picked myself off the floor and ran down the hall to my bedroom. I was running full-force, and never stopped, even when I crashed onto the bed and wiggled beneath the covers. I've been running ever since. My legs have grown tired, my body twitches with exhaustion, but still I am running.

Mario moved out of our apartment two weeks later, but his presence has haunted me throughout my life. I don't understand exactly what I saw that night, but somehow I know that I was meant to see it. I needed to see it. It was necessary for me to see the fear and weakness in my mother's eyes as she huddled on the bed like a frightened animal, submitting to the will of the more dominant male. In his own misguided and inadvertent way, Uncle Mario taught me a lesson about women and how to handle them. When I look into a woman's eyes, I see mascara flowing along her face like an angry, black river. When I take off her pants, I see my mother's fat, hairy pussy staring back at me, laughing like a lunatic under the moon.

I left home at eighteen with no prospects, goals or skills, just a burning desire to get away. I was a drug addict and an alcoholic; I turned to crime and prostitution to support my habits, food had become subsequent to crack and Jack Daniels. The first time I found myself doubled over the front seat of a well-to-do businessman's BMW, his gangly, white organ inches from my lips, I thought I'd vomit. Remembering the thirty dollars folded neatly on the dashboard, I swallowed hard, closed my eyes and prepared for the worst. I felt like my mother, weak and pathetic, as he began to swell between my lips. Later that night, at the hostel, I rinsed the taste of his prick from my mouth with a swig of Jack and fell asleep on the floor next to the bottle.

I met Anitra on a Wednesday while trying to score some rocks from Leon, my connection. It was a three-hour wait, but when the product finally arrived, so did the strawberries. She led the pack as they staggered into the room, supporting each other like bums, their cigarettes glowing in the dim apartment like fireflies. One of the new boys introduced me to Anitra and her friends as Leon divided the rocks.

She was a tall, bony bitch with wide hips and coarse hair like dirty, black straw. The skin on her flat nose was cracked and swollen; acne dotted her cheeks like potholes. Her eyes were two black spots floating in a red river of alcohol. Sometimes, when all else fails, I think about those swollen, watery eyes and the fat, hairy mushroom cloud of my youth dissipates like a fart in the wind.

I gathered my score from Leon and was on my way, assuring him I'd be back in a week. The afternoon sun felt good on my face as I lumbered along the sidewalk, the rocks in my pocket ground together with each step.

I hadn't gotten far, before a thin, skeletal arm wrapped itself around my waist like a snake and squeezed. It was Anitra; she had followed me from Leon's. When she smiled up at me, her gray, rotted teeth reminded me of tombstones.

"You gotta date tonight?" she asked, breathlessly. Her words splattered in my face like bird shit. "Someone to smoke those jelly beans wit? I can keep you company."

I didn't return her smile, somehow it didn't seem right, but I did want some company.

"You got somewhere we can go?" I asked, trying not to look at her, watching my feet to avoid her foggy, pitiful stare. Her arm tightened around my waist as we walked, guiding me deeper into the city. She apologized, saying that she'd forgotten my name, so I reminded her and we carried on.

Anitra rented a room behind a strip club near West Liberty; it was small yet in disarray. When the door opened, I was nearly knocked over by the smell of urine and rotten food. There was no furniture or appliances in the room, which was lit by a single sixty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. Overturned boxes were being used as coffee tables and an old pile of dirty blankets served as a bed. A gray layer of cigarette ash covered the carpet, its natural color indefinable.

I leaned against a wall for support and pulled the bag of rocks from my pocket. Anitra searched the garbage on the floor, finally producing a thin, glass pipe from an otherwise empty cigarette pack. She handed it to me and got down on her knees robotically. A broken bottle crunched under my shoes as I shifted nervously from foot to foot.

She unzipped my pants and let them fall to the floor. She pulled away my underwear and massaged my balls, my flaccid penis cupped gently in one palm. As it slowly began to grow, Anitra leaned forward and parted her wide, painted lips as I raised the loaded straight shooter to mine. I inhaled a thick plume of greasy, black smoke and held it deep in my lungs.

Anitra's lips wrapped themselves around the head of my cock, drawing the shaft into her mouth. She sucked loudly, slurping and smacking her lips as if eating spaghetti, her bare knees digging into the filthy carpet.

I held onto the smoke as long as I could then let it trickle slowly out of my mouth. My heart began to beat faster as, within seconds, the white tornado took over my mind and reinvigorated my damaged, winded body. My brain spun like a top, my eyes seemed to pop from my head and hover high above us, watching intently as Anitra worked on my swollen prick.

Her pimpled face was sweating as she sucked faster, eyes closed, her breath rapidly escaping her flared nostrils. She held onto my thighs for leverage, taking all I had to offer as I bucked my hips, thrusting deeper into her hot, wet throat. I reached out and grabbed her hair, it felt like straw in my hands. I had the sudden urge to set it on fire, but I kept thrusting instead.

I was moaning as the muscles in my stomach tightened and the back of my neck began to sweat. My penis began to spasm violently in her mouth and my balls tightened close to her chin as I began to cum.

Anitra pulled away and let the semen cascade down her dirty, red T-shirt like a mighty river, guiding its stream with her hands. I rocked on my heels, savoring each spurt as I covered her neck and chest with a sticky, soupy paste.

I took a moment to catch my breath, packed a small rock into the magic wand and handed it to Anitra.

"This one's for you," I said as I pulled up my pants and ran for the door. "See you around."

But I never did. That was the last time I ever saw Anitra. As I left, she was on her hands and knees desperately searching through the debris for a lighter, her face bearing a strange resemblance to a fat, hairy pussy.

Several years later I found myself in a new city, with new strawberries, a new set of connections and the same old addictions. I stalked the streets at night, my mind fuming with chemicals, my body weary from the constant rush and speed of the rat race. I tried not to look at the hookers, they only reminded me of home.

One evening early in July, I watched from the window as a small crowd of young white men gathered in the alley behind my apartment complex. They sat in the shadows confident that no one could see them. From my vantage point however, with my lamp shaded, no one knew that I was watching.

Soon, a light-skinned African woman with dark, kinky hair stepped into the light and began to disrobe in front of the men. I recognized her as Mocha, the sultry neighborhood slut from a few doors down. Her creamy, mountainous breasts were topped with dark brown nipples, and her stomach was smooth and firm. As she removed her panties, I could see her bald pussy glowing under the baleful scrutiny of the moon.

One of the men spread a blanket on the blacktop, and the woman lay down, spreading her coffee colored legs apart. Another man handed her a vibrator. She powered up the toy and began to rub it against the moist, hairless mound between her legs. As I watched the tip of the vibrator penetrate her outer labia and sink out of sight, I felt a stirring in my jeans.

She continued to rub the humming rod between her legs with one hand as she slowly caressed one of her breasts with the other. The men watched silently, playing with themselves in the shadows as they began to undress. The man who handed Mocha the vibrator sat down on the blanket, naked except for his black socks. His long, pink dick stiffened as he leaned in to kiss one of her rock hard nipples. He sucked the dark brown nugget into his mouth, reaching around to massage the back of her neck with his free hand. She moaned softly, her eyes closed, her toy digging deeper and deeper into her body.

The other men were all naked now, surrounding the couple on the blanket like a pack of vultures, their swollen members swaying in the summer breeze like ceremonial banners. Mocha turned off the vibrator and climbed onto all fours, playfully shaking her ass in the air for the men. In the semi-darkness of my living room, I unzipped my pants and unfurled my erection. I moistened the palm of my hand with my tongue and slowly began to tug on my rising member.

The man in the black socks circled around Mocha and positioned his penis against her hungry mound. He slowly eased his hips forward, parting the girl with his fingers, and maneuvered his cock along the length of her hot, wet snatch. His jaw clenched as he grabbed her fleshy ass and began rocking slowly back and forth, burying his organ to the hilt with each downward thrust. The other men watched, slowly massaging themselves as Mocha's grunting intensified.

As the darkness outside intensified, and Mocha's animalistic grunts began to fade under the din of traffic coming from the nearby expressway, I thought about my mother and Uncle Mario and what I had witnessed so many years ago. I thought about that fat, hairy pussy and how it has followed me my whole life, trying to swallow me whole, trying to devour me. As I came into the folds of my T-shirt, I thought I could see it, peering at me through the open window. The wet, pinkish lips smiled at me like some fiendish devil, imploring me to come closer, begging me not to resist.

As my eyes slowly rolled closed, I could hear Mocha moaning with pleasure. I could hear the sound of cars, trucks, airplanes and sirens. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a gunshot.

And then... silence.

Silence so heavy that it clung to the room like smog. I bathed in the silence. I drank the silence. And as my mind peeled away from the world and switched itself off for the night, I fucked the silence like the whore that it is.